SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Thursday 22 January 2026
Welcome to the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Fourth Edition. Some sample entries appear below. Click here for the Introduction; here for what we mean by Science Fiction; here for the masthead; here for some Statistics; here for the Acknowledgments; here for the FAQ; here for advice on citations. Find entries via the search box above (more details here) or browse the menu categories in the grey bar at the top of this page.
Site updated on 19 January 2026
Sponsor of the day: Ansible Editions
von Däniken, Erich
(1935-2026) Swiss author of a series of purportedly nonfiction books, beginning with Erinnerungen an die Zukunft (1968; trans Michael Heron as Chariots of the Gods? 1969), which, based on a mass of often suspect and internally inconsistent data, argues that the Earth was visited by at least one Alien spacefaring race before and at the dawn of historical time; thus, for example, the Great Pyramid of ...
Adams, Scott
(1957-2026) US author and cartoonist best known for the Dilbert strip published from 1989, which when at its best superbly (in terms of concept and accuracy of Satire rather than quality of drawing) satirized contemporary office life and corporate incompetence. As with most ambitious modern comic strips, it segues frequently into sf and fantasy tropes – such as Robot office workers, wish-fulfilling ...
Wise, Arthur
(1923-1983) UK drama consultant and author, most of whose works were thrillers; he also wrote as by John McArthur and under the non-sf house name Bryan Swift. Most of his sf was borderline, using genre elements to heighten the suspense. The best known of these tales was probably The Day the Queen Flew to Scotland for the Grouse Shooting (1968), about the abduction of the monarch in the context of a breakup of the United Kingdom. A second ...
Seaforth, A Nelson
Pseudonym of UK soldier, colonial administrator and author George Sydenham Clarke (1848-1933), who was appointed first Baron Sydenham of Combe in 1913, and whose ongoing interest in military matters inspired many articles (under his own name) on submarine warfare, the coining (as he claimed) of the term "imperial defense", and a Future-War novel, The Last Great Naval War (1891) as by A Nelson Seaforth, in which France and the UK become involved at ...
Housman, Clemence
(1861-1955) UK artist, illustrator, suffragette, poet and author. She was the sister of the poet A E Housman (1859-1936), and illustrated some works by her younger brother Laurence Housman; he in turn illustrated her most famous tale, The Were-Wolf (December 1890 Atalanta; 1896), set in a far-northern clime, where twin brothers disagree over a female Mysterious Stranger. In order to defend his ...
Langford, David
(1953- ) UK author, critic, editor, publisher and sf fan, in the latter capacity recipient of 21 Hugo awards for fan writing – some of the best of his several hundred pieces are assembled as Let's Hear It for the Deaf Man (coll 1992 chap US; much exp vt The Silence of the Langford 1996; exp 2015 ebook) as Dave Langford, edited by Ben Yalow – plus five Best Fanzine Hugos ...